Rocks

A 57-foot powerboat ran aground on the rocks at Crystal Cove State Park early Monday after the owner fell asleep while the craft was on autopilot, officials said. By 4 p.m. Monday, a salvage company had removed the boat from the rocks and towed it into Newport Harbor, said Sgt. David Ginther of the Orange County Sheriff's Harbor Patrol. The owner, Mark Anton of Laguna Beach, and a woman were aboard the boat, which left Catalina Island around midnight, bound for Newport Beach, Ginther said.

Tim Willert GLENDALE -- Lilly Thomassian teaches piano for a living, but the Glendale resident is making a name for herself as a playwright. "Let The Rocks Speak," Thomassian's play about three family members devastated by the 1915 Armenian Genocide, has received national acclaim. Last month, the play received the 2001-2002 Catawba College Peterson Playwright Award. Thomassian's play was selected from approximately 300 entries in the competition, said James Epperson, chairman of the theater arts department at Catawba in Salisbury, N.C. The play will be produced in October at the Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival in Raleigh, N.C. "People kept telling me it was good play," Thomassian, 48, said Monday.

Janine Marnien They come one by one and sometimes even more than one at a time, rolling down the hillside until finding a new resting place in the middle of Shields Street. The rocks and boulders for which La Crescenta is famous -- or infamous -- are especially prominent in the hills of Upper Briggs Terrace, and their frequent appearance on the narrow, two-lane hillside road are a concern for resident Tulley Brown. "A rock will come under the fence on a sharp curve," he said.

Gary Moskowitz What started out as a potential setback for construction crews at Mountain Avenue Elementary School has turned into a blessing for campus beautification efforts. Large boulders, some of which are several feet high and several feet wide, were dug up recently as construction crews began excavating a portion of the school's campus to install a two-story classroom building, said Frazer Thompson, a construction project manager with the Glendale Unified School District.

Marlene Hitt "Don't just sit there -- go sell rocks." Well, that is what Philip S. Horwith, editor of the Record Ledger newspaper wrote on Thursday, March 9, 1978. That was after a real big rainstorm. "We bring you today this great poem about mud," he wrote, "and an exclusive new idea for industrializing Sunland-Tujunga. First, the poem-of-the-week: "Rain makes the grass turn nice and green/ It makes the air smell fresh and clean./ Rain makes the flowers spout and bud./ It also -- sad to say -- makes mud."

The Glendale News-Press visited fifth-graders at Mark Keppel Elementary and asked them, “What do you like learning about during science exploration day?” “I like rocks and minerals because they’re interesting things. I even collect them.” SIONA AMARGHOSIAN, 10 Glendale “[Rocks] are really interesting.” LILIT MANKYAN, 10 Glendale “I like science because you can dissect things.

Janine Marnien Scared of coming into contact with anthrax? No problem. Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a biohazard detector to catch pesky spores before they infect humans. The sensor works like a smoke detector, automatically and continuously checking the air for bacteria-carrying spores. JPL scientist Adrian Ponce worked on the prototype of the detector, a necessary device because of the longevity of spores, he said. "They're the toughest form of life on Earth," he said.

A sport utility vehicle overturned Tuesday afternoon on the westbound Ventura (134) Freeway to the northbound Glendale (2) Freeway. Three people sustained moderate injuries in the crash at 12:42 p.m., officials said. A Sigalert was issued shortly after the accident. Authorities closed the road for less than an hour as crews cleaned up. The SUV driver reportedly swerved to avoid a big rig, which was parked on the side of the road, according to Highway Patrol reports. Vandalism incidents 'connected' Police have been investigating a series of vandalism incidents in north Glendale that resulted in eight cars being extensively damaged by rocks, eggs and BB gun pellets, officials said.

There's a rock formation northeast of Los Angeles that you know. You may not know you know it, but you do. Its most notable feature is the series of huge, triangular and jagged rocks that climb hundreds of feet into the air. And since the early 1900s it's been a frequent, popular film location. It's in a car commercial running on TV right now. It was shown on Bonanza and the movie "Austin Powers." And, perhaps most famously of all, the large rocks were used repeatedly in the original "Star Trek" TV show.

Margie Green is extremely allergic to cats, but "Rock-Kats" don't seem to bother her. Green, a former graphic designer, now spends her time hand-painting rocks to look like cats. Green was among hundreds of artists to showcase their work Saturday and Sunday during the 20th annual Montrose Arts and Crafts Festival along Honolulu Boulevard in the Montrose Shopping Park. "I wanted to do something that couldn't be mass produced," Green said. "So, here I am, making rocks look like cats.

"The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time," Abraham Lincoln once said. Hundreds of Catholic high school students interpreted Lincoln's words through essays entered into the Cabrini Literary Guild's Creative Writing competition. Last Thursday, the Oakmont Country Club was the setting for a luncheon at which four young ladies were honored for their award-winning essays. Winning first place was Immaculate Heart High School student Krista Gelev . She went home with $1,000 for her efforts.

BASEBALL Hoover 6, Eagle Rock 5: Fidel Hernandez had a double, home run and drove in three runs Thursday to propel the host Tornadoes (6-2) in an L.A. Poly Tournament contest. Pitcher Luis Zamora went six innings, allowing two earned runs and striking out five to go to 2-1. BOYS' GOLF Flintridge Prep 234, Temple City 265: Jonah Sacks carded a five-over-par 40 on Thursday to spark the visiting Rebels (5-1) to a nonleague win at Eaton Canyon Golf Course. Justin Yu had a 43 for Flintridge Prep.

After 10 years of wheeling around Mars , NASA's Opportunity rover has discovered a rock shaped like a jelly doughnut that seems to have appeared out of thin Martian air. "One of the things I like to say is Mars keeps throwing things at us," Steven Squyres, principal investigator for the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, said in a presentation describing Opportunity's first decade on Mars as well as the mysterious rock. In late December, Opportunity snapped an image of a rocky outcropping on the Red Planet with no rock the size and shape of a jelly doughnut, the Los Angeles Times reports . But 12 days later, when the rover took another picture of the same area, the jelly doughnut-like rock was there.

Bert Ring gives his take on the long-simmering issues regarding the Sagebrush area in La Cañada. The area, which has been served by Glendale schools for decades, wants to be part of the La Cañada district. At issue is potentially millions in funding. -- Dan Evans, Times Community News Follow Dan Evans on Twitter: @EditorDanEvans .

Prosecutors charged two Glendale men on Friday for assaulting a homeless man, officials said. Oganes Manvelyan, 23, and Vahan Kiourktzian, 22, each face one count of assault with deadly weapon in Wednesday's attack of the homeless man, according to Jane Robison, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney. She said the alleged attack came for no apparent reason. The pair initially claimed the homeless man began harassing them, but a police investigation revealed that was not true, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.

What would your town be like if its harshest critic had a seat at the table of power? The question is a natural one for me to ask, as I am one of the harshest critics of what passes for a government in the city of Los Angeles. I have envisioned from time to time what impact I could have as a councilman ranting about backroom deals and policies that pandered to special interests at the public's expense. Not much, I concluded, unless the public was aroused and wanted real change.

A 44-year-old man pleaded not guilty Thursday to charges that he sexually abused his ex-girlfriend's daughter for years in their Glendale home, police said. Jose Ricardo Yanez of Eagle Rock was charged with four felony counts of lewd acts on a child, aggravated sexual assault of a child, attempted sodomy by force and oral copulation on a child, according to a Los Angeles County Superior Court criminal complaint. The U.S. Marshal's Task Force conducted surveillance on Yanez, who was arrested Tuesday in the 2600 block of Saxon Drive in connection with the charges, Glendale Police Sgt. Tom Lorenz said.

NASA scientists are set to reveal at 10 a.m. PDT what was discovered in the Mars rover Curiosity 's analysis of powdered Martian rock. The scoop of rock was the result of drilling by Curiosity that put previous such efforts by rovers on the Red Planet to shame. In February, Curiosity's drill dug into a rock of a grayish hue, very unlike the planet's red surface. The drill bored a hole 0.63 of an inch wide and 2.5 inches deep. The resulting sample was shaken and stirred in what NASA engineer Daniel Limonadi called the "martini mixer on the spacecraft.

There's been a big, new blow-'em-up action film nearly every week so far in this admittedly young year. Nearly all have been intended to showcase a 60-ish star - Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Willis - and nearly all were disappointments. Jason Statham's “Parker” was better; and Dwayne Johnson's “Snitch” is better yet. Are those two stars - 45 and 40, respectively - the new guard, coming to rescue us from the thought of “Die Hard 6”? Johnson - formerly known as the Rock - has built his film career primarily in projects designed to emulate the work of the “old guard.” Near the beginning of 2003's “Rundown,” one of Johnson's earliest starring roles, Schwarzenegger is onscreen for about 10 seconds, exiting a club as Johnson enters and muttering “Have fun!

NASA's Curiosity rover has collected the first sample from inside a rock on another planet. The rover used its drill to bore into a rock on Mars earlier this month. But images released Wednesday showed the proof - the rover's scoop holding a grayish powder. Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge said on Wednesday they were thrilled that the drill, one of the integral instruments on the rover, worked properly. "Many of us have been working toward this day for years.